CHAPTER XIII.

UNSEEN PERILS THAT HOVERED NEAR.


Once Max had crept softly up to the side of the cabin and listened, with
all his senses on the alert. If the unknown were asleep within, he
surely must have betrayed the fact by his labored breathing.

No sound, however slight, came to the alert ears of the boy from inside
the strange cabin; and from this fact he felt pretty positive that it
must be entirely empty at the time.

After that he moved back again and took up his old station, where the
undergrowth would shelter him. He had picked out the place in the
daylight, and made sure it was not in the path one would naturally take
when coming from the lower end of the island. When settling this matter
Max had in mind the unpleasant nature of the meeting should the other
stumble upon him as he hid there waiting.

How slowly the minutes passed! To kill the time he began counting, as
though in imagination he could see the great pendulum of the grandfather
clock that stood in the hall at home, why even a minute seemed
enormously long, and five of them an eternity.

Then he allowed his mind to roam back again to the camp, where his four
chums were at that minute. He was trying to picture the coming of the
escaped convict in his striped suit, creeping up like a stealthy tiger,
and quickly discovering the food that had been left there as a bait.